Local author skates into debut novel

In the middle-school novel “Vertical,” Janet Eoff Berend, a teacher at La Costa Canyon High, tells a coming-of-age story about a skateboarder trying to do the right thing.

She answered questions by email.

In what ways did your job as a teacher shape this book?

I’ve been teaching high school English for 20 years. I get to be around teenagers every day so I see some of the struggles kids go through: shifts in friendships, pressure from teachers and parents to study hard, getting into college. In the book, I tried to capture this element of kids’ lives and to write about it in a realistic way without over-exaggerating or sensationalizing it.

Are the characters based on students you’ve taught?

I had the real Josh and Brendon (two characters in “Vertical”) in my class. When I was teaching 10th grade English, they adopted me as their favorite teacher, and they would eat lunch in my classroom almost every day. I would listen to these guys talk about their lives and their world. Here were two skaters — looked like skaters, talked like skaters — but they were also thinking, really trying to figure out their place in the world.

The book includes a number of references to specific literary works. What role does literature play in the story?

Josh, the main character, struggles with all these invisible rules that nobody ever talks about — don’t snitch, real men don’t cry, real skaters don’t really care about anything but skating. So the references to “The Lord of the Flies” and “Antigone” give the characters an opportunity to talk about rules in a direct way.

Josh is also grappling with his changing relationship with his best friend Brendon. References to “Where the Red Fern Grows” and “Of Mice and Men” help Josh think about friendship on a deeper level. The references to literature act as an invisible guiding force throughout the story and it was too much fun to take a skater dude like Josh and a bookworm like Erin, put them in a room together and have them talk about the books they read. I’m an English teacher nerd, so I just couldn’t help myself.

The main character, Josh, is a skateboarder. Why a skateboarder?

I loved the idea of a kid who is completely comfortable moving along the ground with wheels under his feet, but totally clueless as the metaphorical ground shifts under his feet when he’s not on his skateboard. There is so much that changes in such a short amount of time in a teenager’s world — physical changes in your body, shifts in friendships and relationships, new expectations from the adults in your life. So I really wanted to play around with this idea of “the ground moving under your feet” kind of thing.

Another reason: I have a son who skates. He took lessons at the Encinitas YMCA skate park. I’d drop him off and watch him skate through the fence and I was totally intrigued by the culture of skateboarding. To some, it might look like a bunch of punks on boards who want to cause trouble, but to me I see an amazing combination of creativity and athleticism. There’s also a very cool brotherhood element, where the older skaters mentor and help out the younger skaters.

Tell me about the real-life skateboarders who helped you with the story?

I have two former students, Brendon Anderson and Matt Weiss, who were my skateboard consultants. I would write a skateboarding scene and hand it off to them. They would read it, mark it up with a red pen and then we would meet for coffee or tacos. They helped me get the words right. It was total role reversal — they were the teachers and I was the student.

Josh’s dilemma comes when he witnesses another skater commit a crime. What drew you to this storyline?

There is a code of silence among kids. I call it the teenage mafia and the mantra is nobody likes a rat. In other words, when something bad goes down, you keep your mouth shut. I picked this scenario because it is a very real situation for kids. In “Vertical,” Josh knows what he should do. The question is, does he have the courage to do it? Ultimately, that’s what this story is about — building up courage to do something that scares the heck out of you, whether it be dropping in on an enormous vert ramp or standing up to a terrible bully who is terrorizing your town.

The town in the book, Green Valley, is fictional, but it’s based on a town very much like Encinitas and Leucadia. Josh and his pals go to the skate park, cruise around town on their skateboards, go to taco shops for burritos. The only thing that Encinitas and Leucadia have that Green Valley doesn’t is the beach.

You’ve been a teacher for almost 20 years. How has student interest in reading changed over that time?

Students are a lot more interested in reading when they get to choose what they read. This was true 20 years ago and it’s still true today. My collegues and I try to dedicate a portion of our class time to Silent Sustained Reading (SSR). During SSR, students are required to read a book of their choice. This works out great because you have kids reading what they want to read. Then the rest of the class period is dedicated to reading the classics. I feel like kids are a lot more open to tackling a classic if you allow them to have some say in what else they get to read.

You’re the drummer in a band called Super Nacho. When can we expect to hear the companion album for “Vertical”?

Ha! Two totally separate artistic endeavors! But I will say that I came to writing through music. My husband and I have been playing in a band together for over 10 years. When we started writing original songs, nobody in the band wanted to write the lyrics, so I took on that job. Eventually, I figured out that I really liked playing with words and that I needed to beef up my skills. About five years ago, I took a great creative writing course at Palomar College and one of our assignments was a short story. I had to think about voice and characters and meaningful dialogue — totally fun stuff! I’ve been writing ever since.